From owner-freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Sun Jan 11 01:08:30 2004 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 0C5A716A4CE for ; Sun, 11 Jan 2004 01:08:30 -0800 (PST) Received: from hannibal.servitor.co.uk (hannibal.servitor.co.uk [195.188.15.48]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id B93C643D45 for ; Sun, 11 Jan 2004 01:08:28 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from paul@iconoplex.co.uk) Received: from hannibal.servitor.co.uk ([195.188.15.48] helo=iconoplex.co.uk) by hannibal.servitor.co.uk with esmtp (Exim 4.14) id 1AfbYq-0004mm-Rs; Sun, 11 Jan 2004 09:07:08 +0000 Message-ID: <40011237.3000409@iconoplex.co.uk> Date: Sun, 11 Jan 2004 09:07:03 +0000 From: Paul Robinson User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.4) Gecko/20030624 X-Accept-Language: en-us, en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Wes Peters References: <20040108163724.GA26745@lpthe.jussieu.fr> <200401101945.27234.wes@softweyr.com> <400108FC.9010008@iconoplex.co.uk> <200401110048.52747.wes@softweyr.com> In-Reply-To: <200401110048.52747.wes@softweyr.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit cc: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Discussion on the future of floppies in 5.x and 6.x X-BeenThere: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.1 Precedence: list List-Id: Technical Discussions relating to FreeBSD List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Sun, 11 Jan 2004 09:08:30 -0000 Wes Peters wrote: >So you'll be signing up to do the floppy release engineering, and to >modify the kernel so it can load the boot-device modules dynamically. >That's great news! > If the kernel changes don't support the established distribution format, the kernel changes are broken, not the distribution format. If the kernel changes must happen at some point and the distribution format must therefore become "the package", then that's fine, but that change (including being able to split packages over several physical distribution "units") has to happen first, surely? I'm happy to get involved in any team looking at that as it falls under something I've been looking at for the last year or so in my spare time - package management and installers. >The dog isn't sleeping, it's dead. Like everything else in FreeBSD, it >takes time. If someone wants to donate that time, it'll continue getting >done, otherwise it'll fall by the wayside. > Understood. I just think saying "let's get rid of floppies" is shooting a dog that happens to be near to hand because you don't like that dog, to stretch the analogy. Personally, I think getting the package management issues sorted so that distribution becomes independent of physical medium (so floppies, CDs, etc. can be used or abondoned at will, along with future formats) is an admirable goal, but one that should be on the 6- roadmap. In other words, getting rid of floppies is not the discussion we should be having, if that makes sense? -- Paul Robinson